Docosahexanoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oils, has been shown to reduce the size of tumours and enhance the positive effects of the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, while limiting its harmful side effects. The rat experiments described in Cell Division provide some additional support for the health benefits often ascribed to omega-3 acids.

Professor A. M. El-Mowafy led a team of researchers from Mansoura University, Egypt, who studied DHA’s effects on solid tumours growing in mice, as well as investigating how this fatty acid interacts with cisplatin, a chemotherapy drug that is known to cause kidney damage.

A new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine study will examine whether women at higher risk of breast cancer can use exercise to meaningfully reduce their risk of getting the disease.  Starting from a premise that reducing estrogen in the body reduces cancer risk, and that elite female athletes experience a drop in estrogen levels that often cause them to stop ovulating and menstruating, the Women in Steady Exercise Research (WISER) Sister trial will investigate two different levels of regular treadmill exercise as a possible intervention for breast cancer risk reduction.

Can people's differing reactions to situations of stress be attributed at least in part to genetic differences and do those differences affect men and women in different ways - with the edge seemingly favoring the women?   Research conducted at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem would seem to indicate that the answer to both questions is yes.

As the U.S. Southwest grew warmer from 18,700 to 10,000 years ago, juniper trees vanished from what is now the Mojave Desert, robbing packrats of their favorite food. Now, University of Utah biologists have narrowed the hunt for detoxification genes that let the rodents eat toxic creosote bushes that replaced juniper.

"It was either eat it or move out," says biology Professor Denise Dearing, senior author of the study, published online Tuesday, April 7 in the journal Molecular Ecology.

If you're a Muslim and you're worried that debating your NCAA March Madness championship tie-breaker scenarios at work will cause you to miss a prayer time ... well, okay, you're not doing that because designing technological devices for religious use is very different from designing devices for other uses, like the office, where everyone talks about sports.

A small, pilot study in 50 people in Japan suggests that eating two and a half ounces of broccoli sprouts daily for two months may confer some protection against a rampant stomach bug that causes gastritis, ulcers and even stomach cancer.

Citing their new "demonstration of principle" study, a Johns Hopkins researcher and an international team of scientists caution that eating sprouts containing sulforaphane did not cure infection by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). They do not suggest that eating this or any amount of broccoli sprouts will protect anyone from stomach cancer or cure GI diseases.